I hate to admit this, but, if I didn’t I would be even more of a hypocrite.

Backsliding.

Well, what is it anyway? Picture yourself at the top of that trepidous mountain you just climbed. It took so long to get up there, but you stuck to it, patient to the finish, knowing that what you would accomplish when you got there would be . . . AMAZING. You get there. You delight in the glories all around you and then you rest a while. You go down – you aren’t paying attention, so you start to slip your way down again. You carelessly let go.

Spiritual negligence, for sure. I hit the high and then I tried to coast. *Coasting* is never enough, never good enough. Any of our efforts aren’t ever good enough for God when they are puffed with ourselves. We need some God filling in them.

I have been out of habit – prayer life, reading the Bible, trusting God, and the like have been taking back seat. And I easily blame it on the new situation of being a mom and not ‘having the time’. The problem is, I HAVE the time but I have been FAILING to use it. As a result, I am empty and broken and in full knowledge that I have put myself in this position.

So, back to square one. Help me up, Lord, for I have fallen into that miry pit. But, you have the power and the mercy to pull this pitiful soul out of the trash heap, and put a new song in her mouth. Amen. May I backslide no more.

I was going to post something about contentment, because that has been the current characteristic that I have been praying the most God would work in my impatient little heart. But, another thought popped into my brain and I wanted to start with that – loneliness.

Not that I am lonely right now, but I always seem to face mister lonely at some point in whatever place God has put me. When I was in college, I battled loneliness like it was my worst enemy. In fact, several times, I tried to beat it down in my own ways. Wrong ways, lets just say that much. When I did get married, my husband had to travel a lot with his job. Oh man, being a newlywed and being apart was a hard thing indeed. Loneliness hit yet again, and I tried to drown out that sad and familiar tune with writing and reading and a whole lot of moping.

It dawned on me, this past week, that I have been looking at and approaching loneliness in the wrong way, the world’s way. The world sees loneliness like its a horrible disease. It is something that one must get rid of, and you can do that in thus and such ways – online dating, hook-ups, alcohol, etc. Every one of these only acts as a crutch in the long-run, however, and a lonely people only ends up all the lonelier. The remedy is always Christ. The problem is always us, and how we look at things through our dirty lenses. Loneliness started in the garden of Eden. God created a man who needed a woman. He solved the ‘problem’ he created. And then man created a problem. A really big problem that would need perfect blood to fix.
When we feel lonely, we need to see this as just another way pointing to Christ. We seek relationships to fill the gap inside we feel. It is only natural to feel incomplete – we are on our own without God filling every crack and hole we have. Once we are filled with Him, we need to see ourselves as complete. This human ‘complete’ will still need, still struggle, still have pangs of loneliness. That is where we go back to the garden, where God blessed man with the gift of human relationship.
So, loneliness is not a mortal enemy. Let loneliness do what it is supposed to do, by letting the Holy Spirit draw you to Himself. Let Him then have every thought in your heart, every emotion that you feel, let it belong to Him. Let Him have your desires – the ones you have for relationships, for marriage, for fulfillment. Let Him deal completely with these things. He has the answers to the problems. Let the forlorn tune of loneliness fade to the joyous melody of Christ.

I recently took a weekend trip to Dallas with my mom for a conference. Before I left, I decided to put a picture of me in a frame for my husband’s bedside table. The only one that I could find was a picture someone snapped from our wedding in 2005.
As I slipped it into the iridescent stained glass frame my grandmother had made, I was struck by something. Seeing myself all in white, looking more radiant than I could ever remember. It struck me. The purity of that day, that moment, when I walked down the aisle to my love, in the arm of my step-father.
This is the purity I desire every day of my life. Its 3 + years from that special day now, and I am ashamed that I have too often let my thoughts and actions go to filthy sin. But the beauty of this is the transforming power of Jesus to cleanse us from sin, and to make us white again. We, as His people, are seen as His holy bride. We fail Him, but He never fails us. We run away, but He hounds us down. This is the most beautiful picture of redemption we can ever see. And its not just a picture, its a reality.

So much has happened since June. So much to recap, so much to relate. If I pressed ‘rewind’, I could go back to where I left off and recount all the things that happened, in great detail. But, let’s just skip it.

For one, the job that was a blessing, became somewhat of a curse. The curse seemed to be more than difficult to escape. But God has always been our shelter in hardships, hasn’t He? I didn’t need to doubt. The months June to September seemed to drag on. We made it through another sweltering Texas summer – a feat that I always doubt we’ll be able to handle.
Haven and I made it to our 3rd anniversary. Marriage truly gets better and better with time, folks. And, after some contemplation and tough decision-making, I quietly quit my job. This came about perfectly. The day after our anniversary, I found out that I was pregnant. I saw something that I had been longing forever to see – two pink lines on a pregnancy test. And the nausea to prove it!
5 months have already progressed, same to say about my growing belly , and we are bounding into 2009 full force. Baby Bean is due June 1st, thankfully, before the hot summer spreads its thick heat.

There are still many longings we have, like moving back to the Northwest, but, this one, is certainly one of the biggest we have ever had.

When the Lord meets a longing of yours, remember to praise Him. He gave it to you, and you only should give it back to Him in thankfulness – all that we have been given belongs to Him. With what you have been given, then pray for a content heart, for it is not long before you are yearning for something again. A heart that yearns isn’t a bad thing. But yearn after Him. Pray that your heart longs after Him – first and foremost. And, pray that your soul that does not dwell in pools of anxious thought. Pray for a peaceful spirit. And remember to thank Him.

We have spoken of beginnings now. Perhaps we will go back to touch on it more later. But now, we must speak of change.

Not to sound trite and cute, but the adage, ‘change happens’ should not be a foreign concept to us, for there is truth in it. Change comes to us many times as a welcome guest in our lives, inviting new possibilities, circumstances and situations. We anticipate going to college, meeting that significant other, travel to places we have not yet seen, and I could list many other things that could easily fall into this type of change.
Some of these things may be unexpected to us, but we have desired them, so they are accepted gladly.

Change can also frighten the hell out of us. A job loss, a spouse’s leaving, the death of a loved one, and numerous other unpleasant life events can make change unbearably painful. Though these are events that we have not expected, we did not think that they would happen to us.
When I was 15, a crisis happened in my family that no one would have ever expected would happen. It rent the family apart, and before I turned 18, my parents had finalized their divorce. This epoch is the point of my life flip, that dynamic place where normalcy was thrown out the window.